“Personally, I’m not a huge admirer of the direction that everything’s going in, in the sense that the cars get slower every year so physically it’s easier for me in the car,” Hamilton said. “Maybe in the hot conditions it’s still a challenge, but generally it will take me two race distances to feel the same as I did in my first season.
“As the cars are slower, they have less down-force, they’re fast on the straights of course but slower through some corners and that makes a difference. I just feel like Formula One is the pinnacle within the sport, it should be so draining that when you finish the race you should barely be able to get out of the car. And the cars should be the fastest they can be within the boundaries of safety.
“However, our sport also has to stay relevant and some of the technologies that have been brought in such as the energy recovery systems, which we can see being used on road cars, are definitely a positive step.”
However, Hamilton is comfortable with the sport attempting to improve the show for fans and opting for regulations which can lead to more overtaking.
“Yes, it is definitely more entertaining for the fans to watch in that sense. The problem is you can’t follow in F1 because the downforce of the car behind is interrupted. What I really think we should do is have much more stickier tyres, maybe a little bit less downforce and then, perhaps, we might be able to follow closer.”
“But then again if you think about in late 80’s that’s what they had, they had big tyres and less down-force but they still couldn’t follow that so I don’t really know what the solution is. DRS enables people to get close and overtake which is great, but sometimes DRS is all it takes to overtake at the beginning of the straight and then you’re gone which is not so realistic. It should be harder and more of a challenge.”